ALTA Conference: Part 2

Translating Murakami in Europe

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, originally written in Japanese, shown here in its English, Polish, Danish, and Russian translations.

Haruki Murakami is probably the most widely-known Japanese writer in the West. I was excited to see a panel on his work as I was currently reading his Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and wanted to hear about the challenges of translating literature out of the Japanese. The panel turned out to be fascinating, led by three women translators who, bypassing English completely, translated Murakami from the Japanese directly into Danish, Polish and Norwegian. I found it uncanny their ability to master two languages from strikingly different language families. 

The most compelling points of the presentation dealt with the particularities of Murakami's style; in particular, his philosophical plays on the Japanese language and his deliberately inconsistent use of tense. In several novels, Murakami injects the present tense--a tense not commonly used in English narratives--to play with time, to blur the boundary between dream and reality, or to distinguish the voice of a particular character. To English readers, the present tense is unsettling (it is "the tense of fear," as one of the translators put it) and is generally disliked by English editors. The more familiar past tense, meanwhile, makes the reader's experience comfortable and safe. What Murakami himself said after one of the translators asked him about the subject suggests that the role of tense in a particular language is as much a product of that culture as its grammar, humor, and everything else:

"Western translators should translate into the tense that sounds the most natural to their readers. In Japanese, tense is much less essential to the work than the sound and weight of individual words."

Tense serves an additional purpose for Murakami: it allows him to take the reader on his philosophical wanderings through time. His latest novel, the sprawling IQ84, was purportedly inspired by Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. This seven-volume masterpiece was Proust's self-described attempt to write a "cathedral-novel" that would do narratively what a great cathedral does architecturally--to cut through centuries and space while enclosing within itself a a sacred, nearly static world. (I have only been able to get through the first volume of Lost Time, and while the language really is as breathtaking as a French cathedral, the centuries you spend reading the thing will eventually crumble your willpower).

I have since finished reading the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a dreamy Japanese take on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical realism, and look forward to reading the new Murakami, in light of my new insights.

ALTA 2012

It's been two weeks since I returned from a spontaneous visit to Rochester, NY, to attend the 35th conference of the American Literary Translators Association. During the three-day-long event, I got to hear fascinating panel discussions about the craft and theory of translation, explore the quirky hangouts of Rochester, and meet wonderful translators from the US and abroad who made me realize that theirs is the kind of professional community I'd like to belong to. I'm particularly grateful to Chad Post and his crew at Open Letter Books, the publishing house where I might intern this spring, for showing me the town, taking me out for beer and darts, and treating me like part of the family.

The conference was a feast of great thinking and debating about some of the most fundamental issues of literature in translation. By habit, I took a ridiculous amount of notes. Over the course of three blog posts, I plan to unload these notes in a more succinct (and more readable) form, so they may serve as future material for myself and as a potentially interesting read for other people.


ALTA Conference: Part 1

Translation Challenges in Modern Russian Prose 

Recent developments in the Russian literary and cultural landscape have posed challenges to translators who want to convey Russia's evolving humorous expressions, slang terms and contemporary ideas to the non-Russian reader. One way translators have sought to bridge the cultural gap is through the use of new media (from multimedia to online glossaries), popular reference sites (such as Lurkmore) and interactive, searchable texts. But during the very act of explaining modern cultural references within the text--by way of injections, footnotes and other well-meaning "interventions"-- translators run the risk of altering the effect of the original, and further distancing the reader from the work.

Translators of 20th-century Russian prose experienced this dilemma after the death of Stalin, when substandard country speech (aka "democratized speech") began to make its way into state-sanctioned literature. Writers like Vasily Shukshin, who wrote with warmth and humor about rural themes, used swearing and other "salty" language to break Soviet literature out of its rigid Stalinist style. Translators conveyed this new saltiness by using truncated words, deliberately bad grammar, and orthography that reflected common pronunciation.

Another way to assist the reader was through hypertextual translation: weaving the translator's own explanations, background information and definitions into the body of the text. Perhaps the godfather of hypertextual translation is Vladimir Nabokov, whose translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin included his own running commentary within the text itself on the joys and challenges he encountered during the course of his work. Most readers, however, stay away from enhanced texts in the same way that wholesome eaters shy away from fortified foods: they worry that they're not getting the real thing.

Alexander Pushkin (1799 - 1837) is regarded as Russia's greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. To this day, Russian schoolchildren are required to learn his works by heart.

The main dilemma for translators is that readers want a monochrome text that reads as though it were not translated at all; against this expectation, one awkwardly translated word or phrase can taint the reader's entire experience. Readers want to feel as though they are reading in French, Japanese or Russian, despite their full awareness that they are processing the text in its English form.

The lessons to translators:

1. Don't tell something just because you know it. This includes the injection of biographical notes, scholarly explanations and various "fun" facts that you may find interesting, but which ultimately clog up the text.
2.  If you must explain something, do so in a footnote or in a note at the end of the book. This will function as an optional resource (as opposed to an intrusive one) for the curious reader, who will turn to the note as a kind of  pop-up picture of additional context.

crutch words

In school and at work, we gradually learn to eliminate unnecessary words from our written correspondence. But pruning one's speech of common verbal overgrowths is a much more challenging, and a much less often attempted task. While nerding around on thesaurus.com, I came across this handy overview of the top-8 "crutch words" that we often use to add bulk, but not substance, to our conversations.

I like this list for two reasons. First, it made me realize how much filler I actually use in my own speech. Second, it brought up the curious paradox that these simple, harmless words, which seem almost impossible to misuse, are in fact used incorrectly most of the time.

One of my favorite Regina Spektor songs sums up crutch words perfectly:

...they don't serve much use
no healthy calories,
nutrition values.

So here's to nutritious speech--and to delicious conversation.

1. Actually

   Crutch words are words that we slip into sentences in order to give ourselves more time to think, or to emphasize a statement. Over time, they become unconscious verbal tics. Most often, crutch words do not add meaning to a statement. Actually is the perfect example of a crutch word. It is meant to signify something that exists in reality, but it is more often used as a way to add punch to a statement (as in, "I actually have no idea")

2. Literally

   This adverb should be used to describe an action that occurs in a strict sense. Often, however, it is used inversely to emphasize a hyperbolic or figurative statement: "I literally ran 300 miles today."

3. Basically

   This phrase is used to signal truth, simplicity and confidence, like in "Basically, he made a bad decision." It should signify something that is fundamental or elementary, but too often this word is used in the context of things that are far from basic in order to create a sense of authority and finality.

4. Honestly

   This crutch word is used to assert authority or express incredulity, as in, "Honestly, I have no idea why he said that." However, it very rarely adds honesty to a statement.

5. Obviously

   This word should signify an action which is readily observable, recognized, or understood. Speakers tend to use it, however, to emphasize their point with regards to things that aren't necessarily obvious: "Obviously, he should have thrown the ball to first base."

6. Like

   The cardinal sinner of lazy words, like is interspersed in dialogue to give a speaker more time to think or because the speaker cannot shake the habit of using the word. Like should describe something of the same form, appearance, kind, character, or amount. But, very often, it is used involuntarily in conversation, just like um.